Acquaintances of Shulamith Firestone want the rent-stabilized apartment where the author and activist died this summer to be preserved as a residence for a low-income feminist, according to a petition obtained by The Local.

The petition, which can be read below, outlines a plan to earmark her fifth-floor walk-up at 213 East 10th Street for tenants doing “important” feminist work, who cannot afford current market rates in the rapidly gentrifying East Village. The rent would be no more than $1,000 a month.

Women’s liberation stalwarts like Kate Millett along with East Village literary agent Frances Goldin and Annette Averette, co-director of Sixth Street Community Center, are among those who have signed the petition directed at landlord Robert Perl, owner of Tower Brokerage.

Written by Fran Luck, executive director of the WBAI radio program “Joy of Resistance: Multi-Cultural Feminist Radio,” it notes that owners and developers of housing in formerly working-class neighborhoods have for decades “set aside” affordable rentals. Ms. Firestone paid about $400 a month, according to Mr. Perl, who said he had been planning to increase the rent of the next tenant in order to offset rising taxes imposed by the Bloomberg administration. A one-bedroom in the building, between First and Second Avenues, was recently leased for $2,095, according to StreetEasy.

Ms. Firestone, who in the 1960s helped organize women’s liberation groups such as Redstockings, New York Radical Women and New York Radical Feminists, was found dead in her apartment in late August. She was 67 and had long been afflicted with mental illness in the years following the 1970 publication of her influential feminist treatise, “The Dialectic of Sex.” Her book embraced technology as a way of freeing women from “the tyranny of their biology.”

“I think she was a difficult tenant,” said Ms. Goldin. “She was a disturbed person and would leave the water on and flood other apartments. She didn’t mean to do this, but if we could persuade the landlord that we could guarantee him a reasonable tenant, maybe he could become a hero. It’s worth a shot.”

Because…The Feminist world, the Art world and the Lower East Side/East Village Community have just lost one of our great visionaries–Shulamith Firestone–a woman who was able to remain, work and survive in her/our neighborhood for many years because she paid a relatively low rent….

Because…the average rent being charged new renters in our neighborhood is about $2,100., and had Shulamith tried to rent here today, it would have been impossible for her to find, live and work in an apartment she could afford…
Because… the Lower East Side/East Village environment is all the poorer for the loss, due to skyrocketing rents, of the kind of creative spirits that formerly gave the neighborhood its unique character–but who are now being priced out…

Because… Shulamith’s sister feminists, friends and admirers would like to memorialize her by making it possible for a feminist(s) coming after her to be able to live in this neighborhood and do feminist work here–such work usually being either unpaid or poorly paid, and therefore requiring an affordable rent…

Because.. it is well within “fair housing practices” developed over decades for developers/owners of housing in formerly working class neighborhoods to create “set-asides” of affordable rental units for those who cannot pay market rates…

Therefore…We, the undersigned, do hereby Petition Robert Perl, owner of 213 East 10th Street, and do strongly urge him to work with us to create a “Shulamith Firestone Memorial Apartment” that would, in perpetuity, remain well below market rates and which rent would, at this time, not exceed $1,000. per month; this apartment would be reserved for a woman who is making an important contribution to the feminist movement that is not well remunerated.

Candidates for residence in such an apartment would be vetted by a committee of feminists drawn from the list below and would meet the same standards as any other tenant–with the exception of paying a lower-than-market-rate rent.

46 comments:

When I first read this headline, before I got to the body of the post, I really thought you were making this up. It's like you said once before, about how the NYT and the Onion are hard to tell apart sometimes.

If I were the landlord, I'd find an upper middle class African American to rent this apartment to. Then I'd ask the feminists why another privileged, eccentric white woman should get preference over a person of color.

It would never occur in a million years to any of these august worthies that if they each kicked in just fifty bucks a month they could make up the difference between the market rate and what they want the owner to charge. It's so fun to be all high minded and generous with somebody else's money!

Man, what is it with feminists these days? Why, when I was a kid, feminists didn't have to go running, change purse in hand, to the Pale Penis Person, to beg a favor. Where's a feminist who's true to the revolution?

I guess this chick was at the tail end of the Marxist phase before the advent of the Mary Daly set that started the fetish for hyphenating and acronyming in every sentence in the Angry Gaia Troll phase. It got pretty fugly there for a while.

She paid $400 a month? Jesus wept.At the start of my career, I worked briefly for the the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which had taken over NYC rent control authority. Our offices were next to the old NYC Colosieum at Columbus Circle.There were, at that time, people living in the Sutton Place area for as little as $260 per month on rent control. These people were not poor by any stretch of the imagination, they included a practising M.D. and at least one well-known Broadway producer. Then a local landlord (it may haver been Donald Trump, if I remember correctly)attempted to take back control of a building he owned in the area of Central Park South. This caused a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth in the local press. The tenants of this building, needless to say (I'll say it anyway) were pretty well fixed, they simply wanted to continue paying much less than market rent. Less by a factor of ten, I would guess.After that, I resigned. I just did not want to have anything to do with such a racket (I also thought that rent control/stabilization was so unworkable that it would sson be abolished...guess I was wrong about that).Sometimes things which cannot continue, nevertheless do continue.

Feminism is hardly about low-income (omega) and middle-income (beta) women. It's all about rich, high-status (alpha) women and their alpha males.

Like a commenter said here, it offers little to nothing in the long-run for average, everyday women. It also denigrates and offers nothing for the average male (beta and omega males). Average men are peter-pan manboys after all right? They're insecure little things right? They're all evil rapists who hate women right?

Feminism fears/hates the average man and that's why it can't stop criticizing them. These rich feminist women don't find average dudes attractive. Great. We get it. But do you have to call them names and get corporations/government to destroy them?!? Sheesh. Stop being hysterical.

Feminism is all about rich chicks and their oh-so oppresive upper-class male husbands. Yikes!

Of she was a mentally ill nut. Of course the GynaPolitboro want someone else to foot the bill for a memorial to her. Of course one of the venom-sisters who signed this BS seems to think that "Literary Agent for Mumia Abu Jamal" is a credential (as opposed to something to be ashamed of). And of course "Shulamith Firestone" was born "Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Feuerstein".

"Instead of learning a life lesson from Firestone's miserable little trajectory, these loons are defiant." - They are searching for meaning in their lives, and in hers. No one gets a do-over, though some are hit much harder than others.

Hello (other) Anonymous, I know plenty of single mothers, and you are mistaken. None of them are feminists. Why would they be? They have jobs, not careers; they are not rich. Feminism is irrelevant to their lives.

'“I think she was a difficult tenant,” said Ms. Goldin. “She was a disturbed person and would leave the water on and flood other apartments. She didn’t mean to do this, but if we could persuade the landlord that we could guarantee him a reasonable tenant, maybe he could become a hero. It’s worth a shot.” '

- I'm sure Mr. Perl, the landlord, is just gushing with the opportunity to have another radical feminist just like Shulamith in his apartment, f'ing it up, and pissing off the neighbors. So happy that he'll let her rent it for $400/mo. instead of the going rate of $2100/mo. if the feminists would only give him a shiny silver-colored star with the word 'hero' on it that he can put on his refrigerator at home! Yaaay!

They say she became mentally disturbed, but I bet the reality is that she was mentally disturbed long before she became a feminist. Feminism and rights activism in general attracts the mentally ill because it gives them an opportunity to hang all of their anger over their f'dup lives on a target regardless of any culpability in a tangible sense. Easier to deal with anger towards an outgroup than to contend with the tangled ball of emotions towards an abusive mother. Besides, you'd have to have a few screws loose to produce or believe most of what passes as intellectual output from these people.

What does the owner of the apt. need an extra $20k a year for, and why should he think this should override the needs of a young spoiled female who grew up in privilege? He's probably a man, and a doubleplusungood white man at that- he'd just use the money on patriarchial misogynistic heuristics of exploiting the ovarian epiphany of young impressionable females anyway; its not like he has bills to pay, children to put through college, or pay for his retirement.

Evidently that episode of Hoarders was never broadcast. She must have been at least 64 when it was filmed. She is astonishingly well preserved. Her schizophreniform problems are apparently contained enough that they are not obvious.

'“I think she was a difficult tenant,” said Ms. Goldin. “She was a disturbed person and would leave the water on and flood other apartments. She didn’t mean to do this, but if we could persuade the landlord that we could guarantee him a reasonable tenant, maybe he could become a hero. It’s worth a shot.” '

There are many male "difficult tenants", counterparts to Firestone. I don't see any masculist organization taking up their cause, nor any great outpouring of public sympathy, nor really any attention outside of certain mental health advocacy groups.

They say she became mentally disturbed, but I bet the reality is that she was mentally disturbed long before she became a feminist.

Living in a society with the concept of "mental illness" also does not help. In ancient times, Firestone and her brothers and sisters would have been oracles, gurus, wizards, healers, shamans, prophets. In other words, they would have been given some respect, and the space to follow their lifestyle. No institutions. No regimentation. And somehow they survived in their niches, maybe living in caves or huts away from tumultuous towns, and fed and looked after themselves. They never did the pre-modern equivalent of "leaving the water on" and wrecking their neighbours' homes. They never started massive forest fires with their candles and cookfires.

I'm not saying those were the "good old days", just that attitudes have changed. It's a slippery slope from being a wise wizard of otherworldly knowledge, to being demon-possessed and needing exorcism, to being insane and needing a lobotomy.

Feminism and rights activism in general attracts the mentally ill because it gives them an opportunity to hang all of their anger over their f'dup lives on a target regardless of any culpability in a tangible sense.

I see such activists more as poverty pimps than anything else, profitting from the misfortune of the Firestones of the world. Did feminists do anything to help Firestone while she was alive?

Easier to deal with anger towards an outgroup than to contend with the tangled ball of emotions towards an abusive mother.

"I'm not saying those were the "good old days", just that attitudes have changed. It's a slippery slope from being a wise wizard of otherworldly knowledge, to being demon-possessed and needing exorcism, to being insane and needing a lobotomy."

If you "Look Inside!" and page to the end, you see the jacket photo of her last book, which was taken around about 1998 (when she would have been 53). She looks about normal for that age.

The book jacket notes this of her life course: "refusing a career as a professional feminist". There is something rather appealing about that. She lived a private life and did not make a nuisance of herself in the public square (bar, perhaps, her immediate neighbors and her landlord). The great pity is that she had to live that life all alone.

According to this 2000 Andrea Dworkin interview, Firestone was "poor and crazy. She rents a room in a house and fills it with junk, then gets kicked out and moves into another room and fills that with junk."

And according to this 1998 Guardian piece, Kate Millett was then in dire straits :

"I cannot get employment. I cannot earn money. Except by selling Christmas trees, one by one, in the cold in Poughkeepsie. I cannot teach and have nothing but farming now. And when physically I can no longer farm, what then? Nothing I write now has any prospect of seeing print. I have no saleable skill, for all my supposed accomplishments. I am unemployable. Frightening, this future. What poverty ahead, what mortification, what distant bag-lady horrors, when my savings are gone ?"

The Lower East Side was still an exciting and dangerous place to venture as recently as the late 1980's. After spending an extended weekend there on sensory overload there in 1987, I understood how why so much angry and noisy music was made by it's most prominent residents (Foetus, Cop Shoot Cop SWANS, PG, UNSANE. It certainly didn't strike me as a paradise for 1970's structural feminists back then.

Cat women who get consumed in lefty politics don't seem to fare well after their expiration date:

Parker died on June 7, 1967 of a heart attack[3] at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate was passed on to the NAACP.[56] Her executor, Lillian Hellman, bitterly but unsuccessfully contested this disposition.[57] Her ashes remained unclaimed in various places, including her attorney Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet, for approximately 17 years.[58] Wikipedia

Though the elite seemed more honest back then: These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days--Lardner, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them.... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth....[54]

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.